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Re: I think we're barking up the wrong tree,

The question often comes up whether there exist distinct populations of feral bees alongside domestic beekeeping. Roxane Magnus has done a lot of work on this topic. She writes:

Ten haplotypes (C1, C2, C11, C12, C27, C31, M2, M3, O1, and O500b) were observed from the 44 swarm samples. Four of these haplotypes (M2, M3, O1, and O500b) were found in the feral samples but were absent from a study of 14 queen breeders in the United States (Magnus et al. 2011). This gives further evidence that a number of the swarms were from feral honey bee colonies and not from managed colonies.

Previous studies have suggested that feral, unmanaged populations of honey bees have mtDNA distinct lineages from commercial colonies. For example, Chapman et al. (2008) observed that 30 feral honey bee colonies from Western Australia had only one (haplotype C1) of three COI–COII haplotypes shared with managed honey bee samples. They concluded that populations of Australian feral honey bees are self-sustaining and do not depend on swarms from managed colonies for their existence.

Although C is the most common lineage in the United States, Pinto et al. (2004) confirmed the presence of the M lineage in feral populations from Texas. Molecular detection of the A lineage in the United States was first done by Schiff and Sheppard (1993), and the O lineage was first detected in the United States by Magnus and Szalanski